Ruby Red
by frays
Summary: (AU) Prince Derrick James Hawthorne, heir to the Italian throne, hates his father, France (their rival country), and everything one can about being royal. When the Italian King arranges a trip to France for a negotiation of peace, he discovers it's hard to hate everything about France, especially the beautifully unattainable Princess Massabielle Bellecourt. (Massington)
1. Chapter 1

**(AU) Prince Derrick James Hawthorne, heir to the Italian throne, hates his father, France (their rival country), and everything one can about being royal. When the Italian King arranges a trip to France for a negotiation of peace, he discovers it's hard to hate ****_everything _****about France, especially the beautifully unattainable Princess Massabielle Bellecourt.**

**I do not own the clique—I only own the plot and original characters.**

ஜஜ

"It's not up for discussion, Derrick."

The Italian King's dark eyes were trained on his wild son's own bright green ones, the creases underneath his eyes showing he was obviously tired of the conversation they had been at for hours now, wearing the middle-aged man down until he felt as though he'd pass out from a lack of the sleep he so craved if not for the glasses of red wine his servants wouldn't cease to offer him.

He had expected this from Derrick. He had no girls, only four sons including the stubborn one in front of him, the eldest son always the one to wear him out the most quickly when his other sons would always settle to please him, wanting to keep in good graces for a chance at claiming the Italian throne in case Derrick were to infuriate the king too much.

Cameron Hawthorne was the more calm of his sons, with eyes of two different colors: one blue, one green. Cam's black hair made him look the most like the king himself, his quiet personality making him easy to soothe people and a peaceful presence to have around.

Joshua Hawthorne was his son with his future most in mind, always thinking ahead to the future and trying whatever he could to increase his chances at resuming the throne, a smart mind, only flaw being the mind was almost greedy at times, the boy caring too much for what people thought of him and how to make himself admired by his country (which the boy was).

Kempe Hawthorne was the second to Derrick's free spirit, but unlike his eldest son, Kemp loved the women that royalty offered. He was always flirting with and seducing women of any kind, shape, or form, and loved to sleep with women, occasionally going off for days without notice and return with a wench underneath each arm.

And then, there was Derrick.

His eldest son, the fraternal twin of Cam born only ten minutes before was by far the most difficult of his sons. He was unpleasable, and no matter how much power, fame, riches, or women he could have—or did have—he was always unhappy with whatever he had, always rebelling against every perk of being royal. He was spontaneous, he picked fights with strangers, and was always a complete wild card. It was impossible to foresee what you would get from the blonde boy, but the constant fire in his green eyes told even a stranger that he was dangerous to be too near to.

This reaction, however, was not hard to see.

"How is this not up for discussion?" Derrick's long legged strides brought him to the table his worn-out father had been sitting at in instants, slamming his hands onto the table hard enough to make the table tremble as though even the inanimate object was afraid of Derrick.

"Derrick—"

"If we go there to make a _peace treaty_, we'll be hated. Our people are depending on us going into France and shoving a grenade up King William's ass—let us."

"Language." his father cautioned, earning an eye roll from the green-eyed rebel.

"Do you want to let all of Italy down, father?"

From his son, the term 'father' was not one of endearment, one Derrick only used when he was beyond the point of extreme rage.

The king stayed silent.

"You know what? Screw this. I need a drink."

In moments, the wild son was gone, leaving a bewildered king Harrison watching the door that had just been slammed unblinkingly, the near-bipolar changes ever present in his eldest son never ceasing to amaze him.

ஜஜ

Unlike his claim prior, Derrick Hawthorne wasn't in the mood for a drink—truth be told, he never was, but always used the pretense he was.

Often nights the son would come home as though he were so drunk he could hardly stand, laughing and cursing like a sailor, a charade everyone believed wholly. The only exception to this was Cam.

A year ago, when Cam had cut and hurt himself while practicing with a sword, he had seen the 'drunk' Derrick move more quickly than he ever had sober, seeming suddenly aware, and bright. Cam kept the secret to himself that he knew Derrick drank, but he could never fathom the _why_ of it.

To Derrick, the why was simple.

He didn't want the throne.

Whenever Derrick acted like an asshole or came home supposedly drunk, everyone giving him dirty looks or sympathetic glances, it was something he loved. Every time the thought that he was unstable or unpredictable ran through his father's mind was a step towards being revoked from the title of the heir to the throne, something Derrick yearned for.

He simply _didn't want it_.

When Derrick was young, he thought of being king with starry eyes, believing he could make the people of Italy happy and could easily employ, feed, and make his subjects happy while at the same time resolving any issues with bordering countries, doing everything his father couldn't.

He grew to realize with age that curing the country would not be so simple.

When he learned how little he could save or change with being king, he began the false facade of acting as though the devilish son, always drinking, fighting, and arguing with his brothers and father. He was slightly like Kempe in the way that he slept with women, seeing the way his father looked down on the act and attempting it himself, not a hard feat seeing as though he was the more attractive of the sons.

Derrick's looks were a mystery—all of his brothers, along with his father and mother had dark hair, pin straight, making Derrick's wavy blonde mess of hair a mystery to many, causing speculations that Derrick was the bastard of the royal family, often rumors that he was born to a foreigner like Josh was.

He was, however, perfectly normal, and supposed to fit in to the royal family perfectly.

ஜஜ

When Derrick arrived home hours later, stumbling in his fake drunken state, the sight of maids packing up his room caused a pause in his demeanor. He frowned, excusing himself and going down the stairs, his father engrossed in a conversation with Joshua. Derrick, completely ignoring Josh, stormed over to his father, an angry question in his flaming green eyes.

"How long, exactly, will this cowardly peace treaty take to sign?"

Harrison watched his sons eyes carefully, debating his words for several painfully long moments before finally speaking calmly,

"It isn't only a peace treaty, Derrick. It's an agreement of an alliance, along with a gracious tour from the King William—"

"How. _Long_?"

"Two months, maybe more."

This gave the rebellious son pause, whirling around from his pacing. Any answer of more than a week would thrown him off the deep end, but _months_? His angry eyes held a note of confusion, followed by a bewildered hurt, fading finally to a steady tone of indifference.

"You never mentioned an agreement of alliance."

"I assumed it was implied."

"Well, you _assumed _wrong, _Father_."

Derrick turned and stormed away from the room again, hearing lighter footsteps behind him as the half-Spanish boy approached him.

"This isn't all bad, Derrick."

"Name _one _good thing about this situation."

"The girls." A new voice came, one that had spend hours in the mirror to sound deep and sexy, something Kempe would never admit to anyone, even his brothers who had seen and laughed as he practiced.

Derrick couldn't help but laugh at his woman-loving brother, eighteen and younger by a year than he and Cam, the both of them barely having passed their nineteenth birthday.

"I have no doubt you've memorized them by weight, age, and height."

"Derry, there's _twelve_ of them. I have enough trouble remembering a woman's name after I sleep with her, let alone the weird names of twelve French girls."

"You have nothing, eh?" Cam grinned.

"I wasn't finished, Cammie. I've got three down to memory." Kempe closed his eyes for a moment as though pulling up a webpage in his mind, "Alicia, the half sister of the rest. Skye, the bubbly blonde. Olivia, the walking piece of plastic."

"Profiled them, eh?" Derrick grinned at Kempe, his brother only nodding proudly rather than sounding as though he were offended like every other sane person most likely would.

"Not everyone spends their days screaming at Dad and drinking. _I _have a life."

"Stalking girls is what you consider a life?" A new voice came in, Derrick's twin coming into the conversation with a bright grin. "I think you might need a hobby straying away from porn, women, stalking, or sex."

"I think you need a brain." Kempe said, the best insult he was able to think of on such short notice, always the kind of person to find a cutting insult a moment after he uttered a lame one such as the one that just recently passed his lips.

"_I _think you three need to boycott this stupid 'friendship trip' with me and make friends with the forest people." Derrick began walking towards the gardens in step with his brothers, his siblings behind him rolling their eyes at him in unison, looking as though it was a dance move they had practiced.

"This again?" Cam asked, opening the brass gates to the garden.

The wonderland in front of them was one Derrick always admired, reminding him of a scene from _The Secret Garden_, a book he so loved, but never cared to admit to anyone that he had a secret love for books. Even his family he hid books from, stashing them away when he saw them near.

The garden was beautiful, with glass walls and a roof so clean it shined, sharp vines from growing red roses wrapped around it. Derrick always loved the roses, having found a patch he loved of white roses twisting into pink roses, finally blending to red, reminding him of the painted red roses in _Alice in Wonderland_. The ground was made of grass and stones with a single wooden swing inside it, the sounds of rushing water always present due to the babbling brooke inside the garden.

"It's not something we can look over."

"Derrick, you're not king yet. Our court isn't in your hands for another decade at _least_." Cam's voice was soothing, somehow calming Derrick's fire, rekindled almost immediately when he saw Joshua give him a disapproving look.

"Something you'd like to say, _Joshua_?"

"Yes, _Derrick_. You really need to chill the fuck out." he said simply, causing the half of the brothers not arguing to laugh. "We're going for two months, not marrying the country. We'll go, we'll come back with memories and more about the traitors and French whores to laugh about later."

Derrick smiled at this—no matter how much Josh wanted to be king, he shared the hatred of France that Kempe, Cameron, and Derrick all shared—though with not as much fervor as the eldest son.

"All right."

ஜஜ

A week from that day, the four brothers were standing in a private plane to France, all too anxious or driven from a lack of sleep to sit down even when the plane would jolt or jump. Pouring shallow glasses of wine for the four of them, Kempe raised the glass he had poured himself in a toast, a smile illuminating his light brown eyes.  
"To France. To ladies. To new adventures."

Derrick raised his glass as well, steadying it through the now-tilted plane.

"To convincing father he was wrong, and France _is_ awful as we all claimed."

"As _you_ claimed." Derrick, grinning in the devilish way he always did, put his multicolored-eyed brother in a headlock after he spoke the offensive words that would have hurt anyone else, but only made his forgiving brother grin.

The only brother who had remained silent opened up his laptop, olive fingers skimming over the new keys as he searched the king and cultures of France, causing Kempe to hit Joshua over the head in a show of mock annoyance.

"We're having the experience of a lifetime bashing the country of the cruel and you're cruising about on your computer? We needn't not know the cultures."

Kempe spoke the end of his sentence in a random act of drama, the Shakespearean-sounding words causing his brothers to burst into another fit of laughter, the amusement caused mostly by the ridiculous perverted brother, a smaller part of it from the wine all three of them had downed already, the alcohol not influencing Derrick in the slightest.

Watching as Joshua and Kempe laughed over Cam's falling when the plane tilted again, the eldest brother walked more closely towards the window, watching as the Italian vineyards slowly faded from sight and into the blurred barriers between France and Italy, looking as though it was swarming with life from even their high altitude.

The scene reminded him of looking out limousines when he was a young boy, watching as the crowds awaited his arrival.

He didn't understand it then.

People bowed to him or cried in front of him, calling him a "little king" and a "heir" time and time again, words his toddler mind didn't understand. When he was young, he hardly understood that not everyone was royal or lived the way he did, or even what being royal _meant_, the way of life something he dared not to ask. He observed, always watching and listening with curious green eyes and an avid mind, always wanting the answers to more questions than that he were allowed to ask.

He still had questions.

He didn't understand why his father would always refuse to strip him of his title as heir to the throne, the acts he committed seeming by themselves as reason to banish him from the land of Italy, yet with all of the despicable actions added together his father hardly ever raised his voice to him, never muttering under his breath that the son would be an awful king, or refusing to allow his eldest son to be king, when the removal of the title had been all he had wanted since he was ten.

Nine years later, he still remembered the day his dreams had shattered as though looking through a clear crystal ball into his past.

_The ten year old Derrick Hawthorne stepped onto a small stool to be able to speak through the microphone, letting "aww's" circulate throughout the crowd, he giggling as though they had tickled him and patting the microphone, making a beating sound through the audience. _

_"I wanted to say that I'm excited to be your king. I know what I'm going to do already!"_

_Excitedly, he pulled out a napkin, his green eyes excited as he read over the small letters on it, ripped through in some places where he had pressed the pen too hard against the fragile napkin._

_"I'm going to take our land back, give everyone jobs, make more money and give it to people, make more food and water, and make everyone happy." his list had a dozen other items before the childish scrawl read, "and make everyone happy," but his list was cut short by the sounds of spreading, echoing laughter throughout the audience._

_They found him precious._

_They knew his ideas were impossible._

_Even at ten, the young heir was quick enough to realize that, and he stood unblinkingly at the audience before letting the napkin fall crumpled to the floor, sprinting away from the crowd._

"What's up, Derry? You look like you swallowed a cat."

"_Do not_ call me that, Kempe."

Kempe's light brown eyes watched his suddenly angry brothers curiously, Derrick always a mystery to him. There were two sides to his brother—one side was angry, short tempered, and violent, and the other was free-spirited and passionate. It was hard to tell when his moods would come and what would come _from_ them, and often it was like walking on a sidewalk in the middle of the lights with scarcely a lamp to illuminate the path. Some steps were safe and easy, and some were dangerous and uneasy with a crack to block your path or trip you.

Derrick was dangerous, but still his brother all the same, the reason Kempe sat beside his brother with another sip of his wine, the look made to look casual truly one out of bravery, fearing his brother was in a truly awful state of mind.

"Don't call me Kempe, then."

"You're asking me to not call you by my name?"

"Yes."

"Well, what," Derrick looked amused. "Do you propose me to call you?"

Kempe tilted his chin for a moment, genuinely thinking of the question as he saw Cam fall over nothing, making Kempe snicker.

"Cam."

"What?"

"Call me Cam." Kempe sounded proud of this development, leading the clumsy brother to blink his blue and green eyes at them, walking by and sitting next to them on the leather couch.

"Call who Cam?"

"Me."

"Why?" Cam's look of bewilderment mirrored his brothers, blinking at him in a surprised fashion that made Derrick chuckle softly, the two twins so alike and different combined.

"Because I can't call Derry by his name, so he can't call me by my name."

"_Derry_ is not my name."

"Check your birth certificates."

Cam laughed at how ridiculously stubborn Kempe was being to the simplest of topics, a trait his brown-eyed brother always held, be it bets, dares, or challenges as to whether or not he could bed a women, even challenging himself because he loved the gender so much, something a mind as romantic as Cam's couldn't possibly understand.

"You're an—"

_"Attention, passengers." _a voice filled with static buzzed through the room they were lounging in on the plane, bringing the three arguing brothers to shut up and the brother roaming on his laptop to look up from his computer. _"We have arrived in France."_

ஜஜ

**It's a bit of a weird idea, but I like this story so far oddly enough :)**

**Review, and tell me what you think?**

**I still need a good title, so please put in the comments any ideas for one that would fit the story thus far.**

**And, if anyone is interested in RPing or learning how to, there's a link to a Clique HS/College RPG forum I have recently created, so check it out! :D**

**Keep on swimming,**

**Nala**


	2. Chapter 2

**_First chapter edited_**

**Some questions I haven't yet answered to keep from giving away the main plot of the fiction piece, but the plot will come out very, ****_very_**** soon.**

**Expect the updates to come on weekends—I've set myself a mental goal of 3000 words or more per chapter, so I have to take a few days to write and revise them.**

**I know I have skipped adding Chris (and Dune and Dempsey though no one has mentioned their absence yet) simply because I love all the characters, but did not want to write for characters who I may not be able to capture the personalities of.**

**I do not own the clique.**

ஜஜ

_The hands on the clock spun quickly, gaining speed as they turned and flew off of the hinges, the scene in front of him shifting to one of a ballroom. _

_The ballroom was made of marble walls, floors, and ceilings, blurred at the edges and hazy in a way that would cause it to slip from his mind if he were to close his eyes for a moment. For a moment the room seemed to be spinning, but when he looked carefully he saw it to be not the room spinning but the bodies spinning._

_They were dancing, their bodies too quick and fluid for him to track carefully._

_Spirals of blonde, black, brown, and red hair swarmed him, flashes of amber, blue, green in the dancers eyes around him._

_They were moving too quickly to see, but he counted twelve of the hazy swirls of heavy skirts and nimble feet, a trace of pain on each of their faces. Their shoes seemed to be red, but the red was not the velvet of the slippers—it was blood._

_His eyes came upon a pair of red eyes across the room, watching as the woman who was both beautiful and terrifying raised her right hand, gesturing towards him and curling her hand into a fist._

_He only saw black._

Derrick's green eyes sprang open through the blackness, taking a moment to register that he was no longer in a marble ballroom in front of a red-eyed woman but rather sleeping in a fast-moving limousine. He squinted through the darkness, trying to calculate exactly where his brothers were, or when he had fallen asleep, a wonder he had through the coffee and wine he had drunk on the smooth plane ride.

Turning on the flashlight on his phone, he flashed the incandescent light through the back of the limousine, evoking an annoyed murmur from Kempe, followed by a pillow to the face as Derrick chuckled, turning the lights out.

He was scared to sleep again.

He had the twisting feeling inside of him that the moment sleep came he would see the red-eyed woman again. He didn't have a clue what she looked like, but the remembrance of her eerie beauty and eyes red as the blood from the dancers shoes rung like a bell through his fragile mind, causing him to cringe.

He was terrified.

ஜஜ

_Already he's touching hands with the enemy._

Derrick watched with harsh green eyes as his father advanced towards King William, his father's brown eyes seeming to gleam with excitement as the kings shook hands in greeting.

"I'd like to thank you in person for the invitation—I had my servants email you a note of gratitude, but it must've not gone through."

Kempe held back a choke of laughter towards the way his father was speaking, the sound paused by Derrick's hitting him in the ribs sharply with his elbow, his height causing him to hit Kempe higher in his ribcage than he had expected.

"We don't use emails."

"No?"

"We don't use electronics here."

"How?" this came from Josh, too addicted to gossip blogs and social networks to imagine a life without it. This evoked a string of light, airy giggles from the other side of the room, and the brothers turned in unison to the sound.

Derrick couldn't imagine how he had ceased to notice the female bodies in the room, but once following the sound, his green eyes fell upon an exact dozen girls strung around the couches of the room, eerily familiarity causing a cold chill to fall over his spine.

The girls were splattered about the old chairs and couches in the room, all dressed in old, elaborate ballgowns that fit to their bodies to the waist, flaring into heavy full skirts.

In the blackness of the blink of an eye, he saw a snap vision of girls dancing in ballgowns to silent music in a marble room, the image leaving as quickly as it had come.

The girls were aged from 5-20, the youngest and eldest obvious.

The youngest was one he was sure he recognized, as tall as a table with limbs pudgy with the fat all children had. Her cheeks were pink, her hair a strawberry blonde and her eyes a green so light they nearly seemed silver.

The eldest was more likely a mere year older than he, looking lithe limbed and smug, a look of confidence on her face. Her eyes were a clear blue the color of the sky, her hair light blonde, straight, and long. His eyes carved their own path, falling down to her feet.

The girls were all clad in the most expensive old ballgowns, wearing diamonds and some tiaras, all of the girls looking extremely different from one another save a pair of blonde twins. They looked like angels, but there was a single thing keeping them from looking _too _perfect: their slippers.

Each girl was clad in a pair of dancing slippers, badly worn out as though they had tried to run a mile in them. The silk had ripped through in places, thin in others, and stained red with a ruby-like color that looked too close to blood for them to settle well with Derrick.

A girl, eighteen years of age with amber eyes looked at the golden-haired prince worriedly. Up to then, she had been focused on the two greeting kings, but her gaze was torn from them when she caught the eyes of a green-eyed man, watching the worn, blood stained slippers with curiosity.

A flare of fear shot through her—he was too close already. He was close enough to be hurt, and he was close enough to tell his brothers that there was "something wrong" with the princesses shoes.

Massabielle hadn't wanted the Italian princes to come. The kings were safe—their essences had faded over time, and they weren't of any need. The princes, however—they had their youth. They had their beauty. They had wild, untameable spirits she could see simply through looking at the men in front of her.

They were vulnerable.

_They can't know._

_They'll be trapped._

ஜஜ

The eldest Bellecourt daughter was sitting cross-legged in a chair, her stomach tucked in as the maid behind her laced her corset, pulling tightly on the strings to make the already-thin blonde girl look even thinner.

Skye Bellecourt remained motionless as she was helped into her garment, her gentle face holding the same emotion of solitude as the maid finished brushing off Skye's dress, blue to match her eyes.

Her gaze flickered up to the windows as the maid left silently, some curiosity held in her eyes as she watched the outside horizon. Slowly, as though in a trance, she picked up the blue skirts that swarmed her legs and stood, going slowly towards the open window. Her eyes were fixated on the outside sky, looking like a blend of blue and pink as the sun set over the mountains in the east.

She pressed her hand against the window, pushing slightly, but her hand could not go outside the castle walls.

There was no glass in her way.

Her fist slammed against the wall of air blocking her, crying out in pain as her wrongly-formed first made contact with the barrier around the castle. She was hurt, her hand trembling lightly, but she slammed her fist against the barrier again before slipping to the floor, tears streaming down her delicate features.

She was trapped inside the castle, just like the rest of her sisters. The castle was a prison she had yet to escape, the feeling of fresh air tickling her fair skin something she had never felt.

She had never stepped foot outside the castle.

Skye wasn't able to count how many times she had tried when she was young to take a running start and sprint out the double-doors of the French palace, blocked and injured by the barrier that felt like a brick wall.

Skye was different from her sisters. She had yearned for as long as she had lived to step foot outside the castle, but she had never had the luxury. Her bare feet had never tickled the grass. She had never made contact with rain, wind, or snow. She had never swam in the ocean or a pond, and she had never been able to run anywhere but down the long, winding hallways of the castle.

To Skye, the only punishment worse would be death.

She hated curses.

ஜஜ

Derrick wasn't alone for long.

For a while, Derrick had tried to use his laptop to watch a movie, the task impossible in the castle. The castle lacking connection was strange enough, but his laptop had lost power the moment he entered the castle doors. His phone was dead as well, and none of his electronic devices would charge.

He was now laying on the neatly-made bed in the room provided to him, unable to count a single crack in the smooth ceiling, bored and lonely. There were no books to read, no paper to write with, and no one to speak with.

The solitude lasted for less than ten minutes.

His door opened quietly, the first thing he saw a swarm of red skirts, pulled up enough to walk. Her ankles were olive, her skin seemingly smooth.

"Hello." The Spanish girl spoke in a smooth voice, sounding like rough velvet. Dropping her skirts as she walked more slowly, she slipped across the room with grace all the sisters had possessed and sat atop a desk, pulling herself onto it and sitting with a perfectly straight back and crossed legs.

Derrick's eyes went curiously up the curves and mounds of the Spanish girls body, her body language not showing that she wanted anything in particular from the golden-haired boy—at nineteen years of age, he was to be considered as more of a man than a boy, but the spark of mischief and amusement ever present in his eyes said otherwise towards his personality.

"My name is Katharina."

"Mine is Derrick."

"I know who you are, Derrick. My sisters haven't been able to keep quiet about the most fetching of the brothers."

The way she spoke was strange to Derrick, the language seeming a century old, as was the rest of the castle. Her French accent was expected, but the way her tongue slid around the airy words was different than the modern-French way of speaking, similar to the old ballgowns they were always clad in.

"Thank you, Katharina. I'm hoping that's a compliment."

"It is—and please, call me Nina." The way she arched her back when she sat showed only more of the cleavage her low-cut red gown exposed, her brown eyes looking as though she were trying to seduce him with a single glance.

"Nina." Derrick tried out the shorter name, a grin on his handsome features. "I like that."

"I'm glad you do." she stood gently, brushing the lint off her dress and advancing towards where Derrick sat on his bed.

His emerald eyes met with her syrup-toned ones, and she gave him a shy smile, her scarlet dress making her seem to blush as she extended an elegant hand to him, clad in a white silk glove that came above her elbow. The glove was perfectly cream, looking as though it had never touched dirt or grime—but then again, they more likely had a thousand gloves at their disposal.

"How are you liking it here?" she continued, sitting on his bed delicately, smoothing her skirts before she sat and looking at him curiously. Her gloved hand skimmed over his laptop, her syrup eyes looking curious as her fingertips ran along the surface of the portable computer. He frowned—it was strange to begin with that the family had never used any sort of technology, but fascination over a _laptop_?

"Well enough—it's a bit boring, but I'm sure I'll find something to occupy my time."

"There's many things one can do here."

"So I see."

Nina stood up, signaling with her arched body that she was prepared to take her leave, eyes flickering to the golden-haired boys and back to the door of his room.

He shook her elegant hand gingerly, the silk glove making him unable to kiss her hand like he most usually would have as a gentleman. She gave the gesture back, shaking his hand for only a moment before quickly spinning out of the room. The turning gesture and the speed of her movements caused her dress to pick up, showing her white shoes, worn completely and splattered with a dark red substance.

To him, it looked like blood.

ஜஜ

Cameron Hawthorne was walking the winding halls of the French castle, his excitable nature leaving him with even less patience than his eldest brother for sitting in his room and waiting for a distraction that had yet to come. Noticing quickly the way the electronics he had brought to keep him company hadn't worked, he had decided to wander the castle, watching the paintings with a blue and green eye, both immensely curious.

The same moment he rounded the corner, a small body crashed into him, knocked over by her own dainty feet. His light-skinned arms immediately locked around the flurry of blonde hair to keep her stable, arms about her waist to keep her upright.

Oddly enough, the first thing Cam noticed about the girl was that she smelled like lemons. His mind was swarmed by the thoughts of lemons, suddenly wanting a lemonade, but he refrained from asking her where he could find a glass for the sake of the disoriented girl in his arms.

The second thing he noticed about the girl was the way she looked. She was small and slim, with only light curves and platinum blonde hair, perfectly straight. Her eyes were green, a light shade of jade green, much unlike his brothers emerald eyes. She wasn't hot; she was _cute_ in a way that made her look easy to fall for, giving him an immediate need to protect her from any dangers around her.

She couldn't have been a day over sixteen, obvious by her petite frame bathed in green skirts to match her eyes and the innocence in her face. Her skin was light—more than half of the sisters looked as though their skin had not once touched the sun. Her skin was a tone lighter than his own, something odd seeing to how he was the lightest-skinned of his brothers.

"Oh! I'm sorry!"

"That's fine." Cam said, offering her a smile.

They didn't talk very much—they stood watching each other curiously, eyes going over each other. The girl's eyes looked more curious than his—she was watching him as though she had never seen another boy her age (or three years older) before, and trying to commit the raven-haired boy to memory.

Meanwhile, Cam was more infatuated by the air of innocence that radiated through the girl, looking as though she had never seen true fear or danger, and didn't know too much about the world around her.

Cam knew from Josh the princesses were famous for leaving their palace sparingly as possible, never providing an exact reason why they were never sighted by photographers outside their palace. Cam hadn't quite understood it—Derrick and Kempe were the more adventurous of the brothers and always had been, but Cam had still admired the outdoors always. He loved going into the woods overnight and camping, memories of being chased by bears and tricking his brothers some of his happiest memories. He was bored when he was locked inside—especially without electronics like this palace—and unable to fathom why they would so infrequently leave the castle.

"I'm Claire."

Her soft voice vibrated through the silence that had settled upon them, strangely not awkward for either of the two. He knew he had been staring, but he did not bring his multi-colored eyes away from her jade ones, too intrigued and stuck by the pools of green to bring his sight away.

A soft blush spread along her light-skinned cheeks as he stared, bringing her own gaze to her gloved hands, twisting them within each other to make herself look busy. Tugging at the fingers of the pearl gloves and then pulling the gloves back up, she finally lifted her chin to see if he was still looking.

He was.

"I'm Cam."

Her blush was still on her cheeks as she turned to walk away, her green skirts swaying between her slim legs as she walked.

Cam had never been the most observant of the brothers—it was thought to be Joshua, no one knowing exactly how much the quickest brother, Derrick, picked up. He had never been as nimble-minded as Derrick, the same reason his eyes did not fall upon her worn shoes as the princess walked away.

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**Maraudings | This is set in the 21st century, but keep in mind that this is an AU/Alternate Universe story, so not all of the content will be lining up with what is in the clique stories or any border disputes in real life :) And I changed the names because even now, the royal families have generally more traditional names, the same reason I changed the spelling of Kemp to that of the more common surname Kempe. **

**JOV | Thank you for the sweet review! I'm almost positively adding Clam.**

**psychotic honey badger of death | ack thank you for being first reviewer :D**

**I'm planning on having Cam/Claire and Josh/Alicia as well, but I'm still debating on the plot of how that will go down. **

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**/coughs/ it's not obvious /coughs/ can anyone guess which Grimm fairy tale this one is based off of?**

**I changed the title to "Ruby Red" because I'm super super into symbolism, and I'm planning on using the color red as a recurring symbol throughout the story.**

**Review, please, for mental cookie baskets :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**I do not own the clique or the tales of the Brothers Grimm.**

**Pay attention to the ending—the body as well, of course, if you want a true Massington meeting. ;)**

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_The ground was bending, breaking, and falling underneath him._

_The pearl marble slabs from around him picked up, spiraling around him as though caught in a tornado with the eldest son at the pit of it. _

_He didn't know if it was black in the ballroom, or so bright that he couldn't see._

_The wind whistled more violently, the vibrations of the wind shaking the room so that he could hardly see through the tremors. Through the shaky vision, he could see swirling masses of heavy skirts spinning and twirling in the bright darkness. They were moving with grace too fluid and fast for him to follow, the blurs of arms and legs around him too fast to follow._

_Then, everything was moving too slowly. _

_Everything became suddenly clear to him. They were moving now, but they looked as though their intricate movements had been slowed down to a pace he could follow. _

_When they slowed, they each became familiar._

_He saw the twelve daughters of William Bellecourt, clad in the same elaborate gowns they had been wearing on the first day he saw them. _

_The way they spun picked up their skirts to their ankles, showing their feet._

_Derrick's eyes fell upon Skye Bellecourt's small feet, clad in blue, laced ballet shoes. She moved more quickly and elegantly than any of the dancers, her grace making her long limbs look like fluids._

_Her face showed only pain._

_The more she moved, the more pained she seemed to be. Her delicate features were cloaked in anguish, her face swarmed by fear. Her eyes were almost constantly trained on a pair of red eyes._

_It was the same woman who had haunted his dream the night before._

_She was as beautiful as he remembered, yet once he looked away, he could remember nothing about her albeit her eyes red as blood. _

_Derrick's green eyes fell back on a girl with eyes made of amber._

_The room was suddenly still, the only exception being himself and the beautiful girl with the eyes that looked like an amber gem, dangerous and compelling at the same time. _

_The toes of her ballet slippers were splattered in blood._

_The amber eyed girl caught his gaze, and reached out her hand clad in a silk glove as though to touch hands with him. His mind entranced himself to reach out as well, but before his hand could come in contact with hers, his vision went black. _

For the second night since they had arrived in France, Derrick woke feeling as though he were bathed in a cold stillness. His sheets were wrapped tight around his body—his shirtlessness did nothing to help the cold, but he had always found it hard to sleep with fabric hugging his tanned chest.

Sitting up in the too-soft bed, Derrick groaned softly, his green eyes flickering about the room. He couldn't see very much yet—his eyes couldn't well adjust to the room, and it took him several moments to recalculate where exactly he was.

He felt like he was still in the ballroom.

The room was covered in a stillness so hushed he could hear his own rapidly beating heart, his face heated and hands trembling still from the blend of terror and yearning settled in his heart.

He couldn't shake the eyes from his mind.

The red eyes set an ever-present trembling fears through him, struggling to grasp onto something—_anything_ solid he could remember of the beautifully terrifying red-eyed woman, but it was impossible. He didn't have an idea what she looked like, or what but her red eyes that terrified him.

He remembered red shoes. He remembered the blood of the dancers feet stain their feet as they danced, and he remembered the look of aching pain on the girls face.

The girl.

The dream was a haze of red, marble, and swirling skirts. The world his mind had created within the dream was impossible to grasp, but he could remember a pair of amber eyes and the face of an angel as clearly as he could see a photograph.

She was stuck within the fragile walls of his mind.

He stayed awake into the early hours of the morning, the amber eyes stuck in his mind like a gong would vibrate through a church.

He replayed every wisp of the dream, painting the image of the girl into his memory. The picture had porcelain skin without a flaw, limbs long, lithe, and graceful, and lips full and soft that shook him from his wit and drove him crazy. Her hair reached below the small of her back and was thick, curled gently, and a pure light brown that made her look somehow innocent, worldly at the same time. She was beautiful without her enchanting eyes, but with them she was perfect in a way that was before unfathomable to him, troubling his mind with echoes of her hair, skin, lips, and eyes.

His mind had but a single question.

_Was she real?_

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Massabielle Bellecourt was sitting in the library at the wee hours of the morning, her golden-amber eyes flickering over the original copy of _Of Mice and Men_ with an excitement derived from a lifetime of loving literature.

The curse bound upon her made it difficult not to.

For years growing up, the amber-eyed girl hadn't a clue what to do in the castle she could never leave. She had spent the first five years of her life running and exploring the castle, soon finding the secrets within every nook and cranny her home had held. The castle was massive, a thousand times the size of the young girl, but she had soon found everything there was to find within the palace.

She had learned to read when she was six.

When she had learned how, she spent her days in the library, coming out seldom for food or water. She slipped into the minds of the characters on the pages she had become so familiar with; she pretended she was no longer her trapped self, but rather someone facing the battles between the pages she read of.

The books were her salvation; literature was her destruction.

She was jealous.

Each turn of the pages spiked a new prick of jealousy towards the fictional characters simply because they could travel—they were not confined between barriers they had been between since they were an infant.

No matter how trapped a character was, they would still be free.

Massabielle's eyes caught sight of the closed window, offering her a small sight of the still-dark skies the early morning brought. She could see the crescent of the moon above the stars, giving her the urge to reach outwards for the sky, to lean out the window and skim the moon with her slender fingers.

There was enough light from the library falling out onto the treetops for her to see the way they shuddered in the wind, a wind she had never felt. She had been always curious—rain, wind, snow, or hail were simply mysteries to her, and she could never fathom the faintest idea of the sensation even with her creative mind.

She heard footsteps, much less light than the ones of herself and her sisters. Whenever any of the twelve princesses moved the steps were the light ones of a dancer, disturbed only by a swinging mass of skirts caught between the lithe legs of the princessesses.

Massabielle pushed the curly brown hair that had fallen to frame her symmetrical face behind her ear as to hear more closely for the footsteps coming for the room, followed by a painfully slow opening of the heavy wooden door.

Her head snapped quickly back towards the open book in her lap, lost in the folds of her skirts. She reached her gloved hand to the short novel before opening to the page she was on previously, gently easing her gloves off so the pages would not slip through the silk of the gloves.

She was ignoring who she perceived to be one of the Italian princes studiously.

She wanted nothing more for them to leave, but she needed them as well to stay; she held a trivial hope in mind they would hold something, some cure to the curse that had fallen on the girls so long ago, some eye keenly knowledged to the world outside the walls she was trapped between.

She had dreams that the walls would close in on her—in a sense, her dreams were more and more of a reality with each day that slowly passed.

The older she grew, the tighter the walls felt.

She would soon suffocate.

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_Am I still dreaming?_

_I must be._

The green eyes of the eldest Italian prince fluttered over the pair of amber eyes fixated so intently on the book he knew well, catching hold of the strapless pink gown that made her skin look even more porcelain—beautifully untouchable—drawing attention to the way her soft brown hair curled gently against her neck, long and slender.

He felt the sudden wonder as to what the light skin of her neck would feel against his lips, bathed in darkness and soundlessness.

She wouldn't look to him.

She felt him. She could feel where his green eyed gaze touched her, roaming her skin so flawless with both curiosity and disbelief.

He looked to his hands as though to check if he had all his fingers, to see it the watch he always wore was circling his tan-skinned wrist.

In a dream they would be missing.

He wasn't dreaming of her as he had been hours before.

The only sounds in the room came from the turning of the brittle pages underneath Massabielle's fingertips, light and crisp. The sound was one he knew well, his love for reading he had hidden under fake drinking and sleeping with his string of admirers something that made him familiarized with reading.

"The ending, I always believed, was more betrayal than strength."

The amber-eyed girl looked up, almost startled by the deep voice like velvet that disturbed the silence that had fallen between them.

Silence was easy.

"He was dangerous."

"Hippos are dangerous, but we don't kill them all, do we?" The devilish smile on Derrick's face confused the princess, peering through him with eyes told him she thought him mad. His smile only widened, sitting on the couch beside her.

"Excuse me?"

"They're the most dangerous African beast."

"And I should know this because….?"

"Because they exist, and you're much too pretty to have your face ripped apart by their tusk-like teeth."

She blinked at the combination of the compliment and the warning—even if she had the power to leave the castle walls, there was a small chance she'd go anywhere near a hippopotamus with the exception of the zoo, so the statement to her seemed completely absurd.

Derrick's mind ran along the same thoughts, wondering why the hell he found it a good time to bring up hippos. _When_ was it ever a good time to bring up a water horse?

"Oh."

Derrick picked up the thin book, green eyes skimming over the page she had most recently read. He frowned lightly, handing the book to her between two fingers. She snatched the book back quickly, their fingertips brushing for a fragment of a moment before she could fully claim the book again.

The spark of electricity that crackled through him at the brief touch stilled him, the brush of heat clinging to him even after he drew the hand away and put it back into a natural resting place, rubbing his fingertips to his thumb to make the numbness of the heat fall away.

"I never liked Crooks," His eyes flickered over to her, meeting her eyes for the first time.

He still believed he were dreaming.

"Why?"

"He knew how badly afraid Lennie was of George leaving him. He knew that he needed him to live. He put the fear into his mind, and fed his insanity."

"What insanity?"

"What insane person envisions large talking rabbits?"

The amber eyed girl giggled softly at this.

They spoke of books and literature until the sun completely illuminated the treetops, filling the library with a glowing natural light.

He slowly learned who she was.

She was shy; she looked down to hide her blush whenever complimented in a way that would make the soft curls pinned back fall from their place, brought forwards by her subtle command to hide the pinkness of her cheeks that made her more desirable in his eyes.

She was smart; she understood themes and symbols to the books they spoke of with bright amber eyes, filled with an avid excitement. She loved reading, but maybe more than that she loved arguing. She didn't seem to care if she knew for a fact she was right or wrong—no matter what her opinion she would defend it, always wanting to be correct or ahead in a way that made him laugh.

She was kind; her eyes were gentle, and her words were almost always soft. She spoke with some sense of respect, almost awe, acting as though she wasn't too used to meeting new people. She seemed scared past her kindness, that what he couldn't fathom.

Beyond that, his thoughts were darker.

When she would look down to her novel, he would look to the way her long legs crossed, wondering sinfully what they looked like underneath the concealing fabric of the dress he had begun to detest. He wondered if her legs were as porcelain as her exposed arms were, and if they were as long or longer than that her dress exposed.

When she looked to him, he was overwhelmed by the desire to lean to her and lay his lips on her full ones, a light shade of pink he was sure was sent from hell to tempt in ways he wasn't to feel about the second-eldest daughter of his enemy country.

His mind whispered for him to run his hands down her arms, exposed by the strapless dress, and see if they were as smooth as the porcelain look allowed him to believe.

He didn't want her to leave.

He took her hand and placed it to his lips as she stood, grateful it wasn't clad in the gloves she had been wearing before he had entered.

The skin of her knuckles that brushed against his lips were smooth, and left a hot sensation on his lips that confused him.

"Who are you?"

"Massabielle."

"All right, Massie."

She gave him a rueful grin, slipping her hand out of his and sliding it into her silk gloves slowly, avoiding his piercing green-eyed gaze as she did.

"That isn't my name."

"It's easier to say, isn't it?"

"It still isn't my name."

Without another word, she turned away and left in a swarm of pale pink skirts, not sparing another glance at the golden-haired boy in the chair, watching her with an amused smirk on his face.

She had had the final word in the matter, a trait he had already known.

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The stairwell was long, made of a marble that was hard to grip with the tattered slippers of the twelve sisters. It wound downwards like a snake, gripping and twirling its way down the marble walls in a circular path that seemed endless.

From the top, the bottom was not in sight.

None of the twelve daughters of the king knew how to find the stairwell—they hardly had a clue as to whether or not the marble ballroom truly existed—every night come midnight, they would fall into slumber no matter where their waking bodies were.

When they woke, they were laying at the top of the marble stairwell.

The girls walked down the staircase, clutching onto the walls and railings to hold onto when their bloodied shoes slipped and nearly tumbled down the seemingly endless staircase.

They walked slowly, terrified of what they knew so well they would find come ending the stairs and stepping onto the marble floors.

The walk was long, but they found their way to the ending of the stairwell, stepping onto the marble floors of the ballroom, the same elegantly terrifying display as what the eldest prince had seen in his dreams.

"Dance."

The single word was one they were terrified of. The word let a chill into their bones, the vibrations of the word echoing throughout the room, coming from a red eyed woman.

She was beautiful; she was tall, long-limbed, slender, and had straight hair that ran below her waist, a shade of black so dark it looked to have come from the depths of hell. Her skin was pale, flawless.

Her eyes were the color of blood.

Her eyes changed when one was unfortunate enough to stare at them.

When her eyes were looked into for more than a moment, the red shifted into visions of red tears of pain and crying, bodies weak and skeletal.

The bodies were drowning in the eyes of death, but the cold hand had not yet closed around them.

Their pain was the epitome of true suffering.

A life half lived, drained fully of their spirits until they were a shivering husk of what was once a beautiful soul, now shivering and clenching onto a death that would not come, an end to their sufferings that would never be granted.

They were the past victims of the red-eyed woman.

The twelve dancing princesses were her current prey.

And they danced.

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**That took much longer to write than I expected it to, but I'm a bit more excited for this now.**

**Read my latest story ****_Wings_**** on my profile if you're into guardian angels, demons, the supernatural, and of course Massington and Clam.**

**My review box is hungry—feed it!**

**Love, **

**Nalanda.**


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